For the Sake of American Youth

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Speaker 3 here's the show.

Speaker 3 On a Monday in 1948, two fifth graders in Oklahoma City skipped school, Jimmy Boddard, age 11, and Ronnie Peterson, age 12.

Speaker 3 The next day, they were reported missing to highway patrol. That night, a sheriff found them in a town 130 miles away, almost in Texas.

Speaker 3 The boys said they had hitchhiked there. Their parents came to pick them up and take them home.

Speaker 3 But then, the sheriff found an abandoned plane in a field nearby. They traced the numbers on the plane back to its owner, in Oklahoma City, and the fifth graders admitted that they had stolen it.

Speaker 3 Ronnie said neither of them had flown a plane before, but according to a state trooper, they made a perfect landing. Ronnie said there's a button with the word starter marked over it.

Speaker 3 Then of course we knew about throttles and such things.

Speaker 3 But Ronnie said Jimmy was the one who took off and landed the plane, and it had been his idea to fly.

Speaker 3 He had planned to drop Ronnie off in a field so he could visit a friend who lived in Texas, and then he'd keep on flying to New Mexico.

Speaker 3 But while Jimmy was taxiing around the field getting ready to go, the front wheel got stuck. So they ended up abandoning the plane and walking towards the nearest town together.

Speaker 3 Ronnie said Jimmy had learned how to fly from reading a comic book.

Speaker 3 The state trooper said, they said it was easy. They looked at some comic books that told all about it.

Speaker 3 A few years later, in 1952, six houses in Lakeland, Florida were robbed. At each one, the burglar had left a note that said, The Phantom Strikes Again.

Speaker 3 A detective tracked down the burglar using footprints and fingerprints from the scene and a bicycle that was nearby.

Speaker 3 The burglar was a 13-year-old boy who said he was doing what he'd seen in a comic book. In total, he'd stolen $6.

Speaker 4 The increase in craven crime committed by young Americans is rising at a frightening pace.

Speaker 6 More and more of our children are committing more serious crime

Speaker 3 between 1948 and 1956.

Speaker 3 The number of teenagers and kids appearing in court more than doubled.

Speaker 3 One senator called the rising crime rates the fifth horseman of doom.

Speaker 3 In 1953, the Senate formed a subcommittee to figure out what was going on with kids in crime, and they started reading all the comics that they could.

Speaker 3 I'm Phoebe Judge.

Speaker 7 This is Criminal.

Speaker 5 I had always thought what they call the golden age of comics, which is that 30s and 40s period, was like, you know, Boy Scout comics, and it was not.

Speaker 3 Saladin Ahmed writes comics for publishers like Marvel.

Speaker 5 One of the best series is called Crimes by Women, and it's like these really sensationalist tales, often of women like taking out their abusive partners or husbands or whatever, going on crime sprees.

Speaker 5 They're incredible comics.

Speaker 3 By the 1950s, publishers were selling between 70 and 100 million comic books every month.

Speaker 5 All during World War II, despite kind of the deprivations that people on the home front are going through, people are buying loads of comics.

Speaker 5 Women were buying them.

Speaker 5 You know, women had disposable income because they were working in factories and a lot of black folks who were in positions they wouldn't have been allowed into except that people needed workers.

Speaker 5 People who had had less disposable income a few years prior were out there buying stuff and it led to a wild west of comics writing and art.

Speaker 5 There were a lot of these comics with like criminal protagonists and nominally there would be some little bit where they got punished at the end, but it was clearly glorifying crime basically.

Speaker 3 There were characters like Lady Satan, who wore a red cloak and a black mask and fought Nazis.

Speaker 3 There were also comic books written by black artists featuring all black characters, like a detective named Ace Harlem. A journalist named Oren C.

Speaker 3 Evans created Ace Harlem in 1937 for a newspaper strip.

Speaker 3 And before Spider-Man, there was Spider-Queen with web fluid shooting bracelets who swung between buildings.

Speaker 5 There are some cool kind of racial inversions too.

Speaker 5 There's a superhero named Mantoka, who's like a very stereotypical and problematic depiction of a Native American character, but he's like using fire magic to burn like, you know, white miners who are taking over the land.

Speaker 3 We wanted to go see some of the comics Soladin Ahmed was talking about.

Speaker 3 So we're here at the National Archives because we're trying to find some comics.

Speaker 3 I had never been to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 3 Things are probably safe in this building, you know? Like, it doesn't seem like anything's going to get out of here. Those columns are pretty big.

Speaker 3 In the 1950s, they had a 50-ton steel safe built under the floor.

Speaker 3 And for years, they would press a button every night to lower the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights down into a vault.

Speaker 3 We walked through a giant hall on our way to the elevator. And is something famous about this area in here?

Speaker 8 Well, that's the Constitution.

Speaker 3 Is that the real Constitution? And we ended up in a small room downstairs. Well, first off, let me just ask you your name.

Speaker 9 I'm Adam Bairnbach.

Speaker 3 And what do you do?

Speaker 9 I am an archivist for the Center for Legislative Archives, so we have the records of Congress dating back to 1789.

Speaker 3 Including all of the comics senators collected back in the 50s to try to figure out why kids were committing more crimes.

Speaker 3 He showed us the Senate's copy of Super Funnies presents Dopey Duck and Captain America, Commie Smasher.

Speaker 3 But most of the comics weren't about superheroes.

Speaker 3 At the time, people had started writing sci-fi stories, and there were a lot of comics about romance, relationships going south, cheating, eloping, stealing cars, women getting tricked into fake marriages.

Speaker 3 What's wrong with Boy Love's Girl?

Speaker 3 Oh, she's on his lap.

Speaker 9 And I believe they're getting caught by her.

Speaker 9 I'm guessing. I didn't read the book itself, but they're getting caught by either her husband or her spurned lover.

Speaker 3 One of the comics had a picture of a man and a woman on the cover smiling, with with their foreheads pressed together. The title was Young Brides.

Speaker 3 But then we started reading the caption.

Speaker 3 The negligee was black lace, soft and filmy as a cloud. There was only one fault I could find with it.
My husband had bought it for the other woman.

Speaker 9 I picked that one out particularly because I thought that was an extra kind of saucy cover that was definitely...

Speaker 3 Well, you wouldn't think that it was...

Speaker 3 The picture is pretty innocent, but then you start reading that text.

Speaker 9 Right, and that was sort of the combination of the storytelling itself and the images being what they viewed as, you know, problematic and affecting the crime rate of juvenile delinquency.

Speaker 3 A lot of the Senate's collection was horror comics. They were some of the most popular at the time.
About a third of all the comic books being published.

Speaker 3 Children could buy them for around 10 cents, and some people were very unhappy about it.

Speaker 5 Mostly, hideously gory stuff was the problem, like people getting their heads chopped off, you know, monsters ripping people's flesh off. And, you know, a lot of it had a creepy, sexist vibe to it.

Speaker 3 It wasn't just the content of the comics that interested the senators. They were also looking at the ads inside.

Speaker 3 A concerned psychiatrist sent in a letter describing the problem. It's preserved in the archive.

Speaker 3 Millions of comic books in the hands of children have illustrated advertisements of switchblade knives, and nobody can understand the comic book question who does not recognize this as one of the essential facts.

Speaker 3 So he's saying they're all buying switchblades.

Speaker 3 Then, in the summer of 1954, the arrest of a group of four teenage boys in Brooklyn made national news.

Speaker 3 They were accused of beating and murdering two men on the street. One was sleeping on a bench.
And they admitted to attacking two young women with a horsewip and to setting another man on fire.

Speaker 3 The leader of the gang was an 18-year-old named Jack Koslow.

Speaker 3 Jack Koslow was Jewish, but he said Hitler was his hero. He had taught himself German.
He was in a gifted program at school and graduated early.

Speaker 3 The district attorney said, quote, I can't understand what would make boys do such terrible things. They apparently had no reason except the thrill they got.

Speaker 3 People started calling them the thrill killers.

Speaker 3 But the court-appointed psychiatrist on the case, Frederick Wortham, thought he knew exactly what pushed them to do what they did.

Speaker 3 Frederick Wortham said Jack Kozlow admitted he was addicted to horror comics.

Speaker 10 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 3 One journalist wrote that 18-year-old Jack Koslow thought of himself as a crime-fighting hero helping out the police.

Speaker 3 One of the other teenagers in their gang said their goal was to clean the street of bums.

Speaker 3 Jack Koslow also told the psychiatrist, Frederick Wortham, he had purchased a whip and cloak through ads in a horror comic.

Speaker 3 Frederick Wortham told a journalist, I wish to emphatically point out that such crimes did not exist before this comic book era. Here he is.

Speaker 11 No child has ever said to me as an excuse, I did this because I read it in a comic book. I had to figure that out.
It was all up to me. I had to try and find out how that came about.

Speaker 11 The children don't see that.

Speaker 3 Years before, Frederick Wertham had directed a clinic that conducted psychiatric exams of people convicted of felonies. It was the first clinic of its kind in the U.S.
He often testified in court.

Speaker 3 He also helped open the first mental health clinic in Harlem called the LaFargue Clinic.

Speaker 13 So there's quite a lot of photographs here. I just brought all of them out.
This is an interesting one of a patient taken by Gordon Parks,

Speaker 13 I guess, waiting in the waiting room. There's some that show Wertham by himself.

Speaker 3 After we left the National Archives, we walked to the Library of Congress to meet historian Josh Levy. He showed us Frederick Wertham's papers.
They have around 200 boxes of them.

Speaker 3 Frederick Wertham and the other Lafargue clinic staff did research on the negative mental health effects of segregation.

Speaker 3 And what they found was used in desegregation cases that led up to Brown versus Board of Education.

Speaker 3 In terms of all the things he got involved in, how important do you think the comic book work was to him?

Speaker 13 I think it was important. He came back to it over and over again.
He did a lot of other things, but comics is sort of what he's remembered for now.

Speaker 3 Spending time talking with young patients in the Harlem Clinic is how Frederick Wertham first got curious about comic books. They would tell him what they were reading, and it worried him.

Speaker 13 This is a transcript, really, that Wertham had prepared from a child patient that he saw, age 15.

Speaker 3 And so here

Speaker 3 this patient is speaking a lot about comic books.

Speaker 13 Yes, quite a lot about comic books.

Speaker 13 This is a member of what Wertham called the Hookie Club, which was a group of kids that were considered delinquents that would gather, and then Wertham would press them about different kinds of questions that

Speaker 13 he wanted to know from them. I don't know if you want to read some of these.

Speaker 3 I mean, this second comic book is Crimes by Women. He describes the outside, a cop beating a woman, it seems to me, with her dress hanging off practically.

Speaker 3 Her legs are showing above her knee, with a gun in her hand smoking, as though she already shot somebody, with hate and disgust for the cop. The condition is mostly murder.

Speaker 3 So that would be an argument for, this is not a thing a kid should be seeing. Right.

Speaker 3 Frederick Wertham argued that not only were the comics too violent, they were also racist.

Speaker 3 He wrote that one 15-year-old patient told him about the ways black people were depicted in the funny books he read, as, quote, slaves more or less, and the worst people there are.

Speaker 3 Frederick Wortham said, Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry. They get their children much younger.
They teach them race hatred before they can read.

Speaker 13 His claim is that the racist comic book and the segregated school, they're all sort of the same thing. It's a kind of environment that creates trauma and harm in young children.

Speaker 3 Frederick Wortham published a book about comics called Seduction of the Innocent.

Speaker 3 In his work as the court-appointed psychiatrist in Jack Koslow's murder trial, Frederick Wertham focused on one comic in particular, Nights of Horror.

Speaker 3 Nights of Horror was a lot about sex, women whipping men, bondage, torture.

Speaker 3 Frederick Wortham concluded that Nights of Horror was to blame for Jack Koslow's crimes, though Jack Koslow never admitted to reading that series specifically.

Speaker 3 There's a letter from Frederick Wortham addressed to Jack Coslow at the Library of Congress. We're not sure if he ever sent it.
Jack Koslow had already been convicted of first-degree murder.

Speaker 3 In the letter, Wortham says he thinks Jack Koslow was a victim, too, of his environment.

Speaker 13 This is a really interesting note because Jack Koslow is guilty.

Speaker 13 And Wertham says,

Speaker 13 you are a human being like everybody else, and that whatever fault may be yours, you were the victim also of vicious outside influences over which you had no control.

Speaker 3 That year, New York banned Nights of Horror. The police went to bookstores and confiscated thousands of copies.

Speaker 3 One bookstore tried to challenge the ban in court, but the judge decided the comics were, quote, dirt for dirt's sake, and ordered they should all be destroyed.

Speaker 3 The case went to the Supreme Court, and they upheld the judge's ruling.

Speaker 3 Much later, it came out that the artist of Nights of Horror was Joe Schuster, co-creator of Superman.

Speaker 3 Frederick Wortham also objected to the sound effects in comics.

Speaker 13 Like Clonk and Kaplash and Kirpow and Wump and Kafum.

Speaker 13 And then he says, that is the message, it means just what it says. To the crudity of the expression corresponds the crudity and feeling.

Speaker 13 You know, he loved art. One of his objections to comics and one of the sort of minor arguments that he made for the damage that comics could do to a child's development is that the art was bad.

Speaker 3 And he took issue with specific characters.

Speaker 13 He clearly, at one point, becomes obsessed with the idea that Batman and Robin will influence young boys to become homosexual, and he sees that as something that's extremely negative.

Speaker 10 He, for instance, believed that a character like Wonder Woman provided a lesbian role model for girl readers and became a figure that would terrify and emasculate young male readers.

Speaker 3 Carol Tilly is a comics historian.

Speaker 10 Some individuals within the psychiatric community thought he was a bit of a crank. He had a reputation for being difficult, for being standoffish.

Speaker 10 But there were a large number of folks within law enforcement, in religious education circles, in other types of education, social work, who did buy into the kinds of ideas that Wertham was advancing.

Speaker 3 In one trial transcript at the Library of Congress, you can see a lawyer questioning Frederick Wertham's methods. The lawyer doubted they were exact science.

Speaker 13 And Wertham says, as exact as measles, meaning that he is as precise as a doctor who's diagnosing a patient with measles.

Speaker 3 His idea started gaining traction. He was interviewed on popular radio shows and for magazines like Reader's Digest, and people were burning comics.

Speaker 10 There were dozens of comics burnings, often sponsored by parochial schools or scouting groups or PTAs.

Speaker 10 You could get a new appropriate book for young readers if you brought, say, 10 comics to be burned in the bonfire.

Speaker 8 That was the exchange.

Speaker 10 You often got a good book in place of the bad comics.

Speaker 3 It was around this time that the Senate announced they would hold hearings to investigate comics.

Speaker 3 They were flooded with letters from the public. Here's one from Don Robertson in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Speaker 10 If you ban comic books, the FCBACA stormtroopers, and then in parentheses it says, future comic book artist of America, will storm the White House and steal every one of Ike's golf clubs.

Speaker 3 In another letter written by three kids, there are annotations because the senators couldn't understand the slang the kids used. Someone, we aren't sure who, tried to translate the slang.

Speaker 3 One part of the letter refers to the, quote, hubcaps who are complaining.

Speaker 10 The translated version is, those big shots who are complaining about the literature have never even read one.

Speaker 3 The Senate received more than 500 letters.

Speaker 9 So these are mostly, you can see they identify themselves as boys somewhere between 9 to 16 years old.

Speaker 3 Now, I like this one because it says, I have been reading comic books for seven to nine years. Every kind of book that was written, I have never robbed a bank

Speaker 3 or thinks like that.

Speaker 9 Looks like he's been reading books for seven to nine years, and he is 14 years old.

Speaker 3 I'm a fan of Don Cunningham.

Speaker 3 Don is from Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Speaker 3 Could you just read Dawn's note?

Speaker 9 It's one of my favorites. Gentlemen, I'm a boy of 16 and I'm old enough to know that a lot of nonsense is going on in this.
This nonsense about comic books is a lot of harmless nothing.

Speaker 9 Now you'll probably throw this away without reading the rest of it and say, humph, these miners, what will they think up next? Well, I don't care what you say.

Speaker 9 I say if you banned, and he writes the word banned, B-A-N-D, comic books out, you'll destroy American youth, as you say comic books do.

Speaker 9 I haven't got proof, but I'll tell you what is really the cause of all this youth killing you hear about on the radio and TV, and it's these murder and crime programs on radio and TV.

Speaker 9 And another thing, I read in a magazine on how you make your own atomic bomb, and this was not a comic book.

Speaker 9 As I said before, if you banned the AND comic books out, any kind, you'll destroy American youth and maybe destroy the future world. Yours very truly, Don Cunningham.
P.S.

Speaker 9 I hope you'll think about this very hard and tell the rest of your subcommittee too. Thanks, P.S., for the sake of American youth.

Speaker 3 The hearings aired on TV, led by a Democrat named Estes Kefauver.

Speaker 3 They started on April 21st, 1954.

Speaker 4 We are not a subcommittee of blue-nosed censors.

Speaker 6 We have no preconceived notions as to the possible need for new legislation at this point. We want to find out what damage, if any,

Speaker 4 is being done to our children's minds.

Speaker 6 This and this only is the task at hand.

Speaker 3 They started going through comics one by one.

Speaker 12 In this particular issue, called Frisco Mary,

Speaker 16 concerns an attractive and glamorous young woman woman who gains control of a California underworld gang.

Speaker 16 Our next picture shows Mary

Speaker 16 emptying her submachine gun into the body of an already wounded police officer. Now, in all fairness, it should be added that Mary finally dies in the gas chamber.

Speaker 16 following a violent and lucrative criminal career.

Speaker 3 The senators looked at scene after after scene.

Speaker 17 Snatching a gun from the night table, Lucy shoots and kills her father from the window.

Speaker 17 She then runs out into the yard and presses the gun into the hand of her mother, who has fainted and lies unconscious on the ground.

Speaker 17 The latter two pictures show Lucy's joy and contentment that it had all worked out as she had planned and that she is now free to live with her aunt Kate.

Speaker 3 The New

Speaker 3 said the star witness of the hearings was Frederick Wortham.

Speaker 11 I have seen children who've stolen a quarter.

Speaker 11 I have seen children who've stolen $30,000.

Speaker 3 He told the committee children were using comic books as how-to manuals for crime.

Speaker 11 Children nowadays, they make maps and say, this is the street where the stories that you're going to rob, and this is where we want to hide, and this is how we get away.

Speaker 11 If you don't know the method, you can't execute the act. And the method itself is so intriguing and so interesting that the children are very apt to commit it.

Speaker 14 Well, in some of the comic books, the

Speaker 14 villain made one mistake. He almost committed a perfect crime, but he made one mistake and maybe got caught.
That's correct.

Speaker 11 That is absolutely correct, Senator.

Speaker 11 In fact, that is the whole philosophy of comic books. The point is not don't commit any crime, but the point is don't make any mistakes.
Don't leave any matches there. Don't leave the light on.

Speaker 11 Don't make any noise. Don't break the glass loud.

Speaker 3 But the Senate also asked people who made comics to speak. One man in particular, Bill Gaines, who ran EC Comics, got a lot of attention.

Speaker 3 Here's Adam Barenbach at the National Archives.

Speaker 9 The Crime Suspense Stories cover right there is actually the comic that was held up in the hearing. So Bill Gaines was on the stand, and I believe it's Kefauver who's interviewing him.

Speaker 9 And Kefauver holds up that particular book in which there is a man holding what appears to be a woman's head that had just been hacked off with an axe and

Speaker 9 he asked Gaines, do you think that this is in good taste? Do you think this cover is in good taste? And Gaines replied rather snarkily, for a horror comic, I think it is.

Speaker 3 Here's Bill Gaines.

Speaker 18 A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping from it, and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.

Speaker 14 Well, you've got blood coming out of her mouth, you see.

Speaker 14 And here's blood on the axe, the hatchet.

Speaker 18 I think most adults are shocked by that.

Speaker 14 This is the

Speaker 14 July one.

Speaker 14 Seems to be a man with a woman in the boat, and he's choking her to death here.

Speaker 14 With a crowbar. With a crowbar.
Is that in good taste, you think?

Speaker 18 I think so.

Speaker 10 we'll be right back

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Speaker 3 The 1954 Senate comic book hearings ended in June, but the committee didn't issue a report on what they'd found until March of the next year.

Speaker 3 They didn't propose any new laws saying that would be censorship.

Speaker 3 But it didn't matter. By then, comics had already changed because comic book publishers were so afraid of public opinion turning against them.

Speaker 5 The comics industry basically decides to self-regulate and says, no, no, no, you don't need to shut us down. We'll make comics that you like.

Speaker 3 Soladin Ahmed.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 they get a conservative judge to kind of help write this code that defines what's allowed and what's not allowed in order to get the stamp approved by the comics code

Speaker 3 the comics code was a list of rules if you followed them you could sell your comic the first rule of the code was crime shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals

Speaker 3 Another read, in every instance, good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.

Speaker 5 It literally says that the police can't be wrong, right?

Speaker 5 The criminal has to be punished. The police have to be shown to be right.
People forget this because we always assume that like loving the police is some traditional quote-unquote thing.

Speaker 5 But when you look at 1930s movies about detectives where the detective is a hero, police are usually assholes, you know, and they're usually either incompetent or malicious, at least as often as they're helpful or well-intentioned.

Speaker 5 And, you know, there's a fair amount of that in like, you know, 1940s comics. The cops are not universally to be trusted in these comics.

Speaker 5 And that changes sharply in the 50s because that's one of the provisions in the code is that, you know, it has to consistently be shown that crime does not pay and that the state is right, for lack of a more subtle term.

Speaker 3 Comics couldn't use the words horror or terror in titles anymore. And if you wanted to put the word crime on a cover, it couldn't be a lot bigger than the other words in the title.

Speaker 3 Vampires and werewolves were banned.

Speaker 3 And the code said, quote, females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

Speaker 5 It literally specifies how much you can see, how much skin you can see.

Speaker 3 The judge running the Comics Code Authority told a reporter that changes were made in 25% of the drawings to de-emphasize feminine curves.

Speaker 3 Quote, sexual abnormalities were also banned.

Speaker 5 There was a lot of kind of queer panic around Batman.

Speaker 3 Publishers introduced Kathy Kane, Batwoman, as a love interest for Batman.

Speaker 5 Various things were done to the Bat family at various times to try and make that less

Speaker 5 gay, quote unquote. And, you know, there are lots of panels of pre-code comics where Batman and Robin are in bed together.
Now, is it supposed to be sexy?

Speaker 5 I don't think so, but it's to me, that says something about

Speaker 5 what readers felt was available as a reading, right?

Speaker 5 If they were taking that seriously, we can laugh at it, but it's also like, hey, you know, maybe folks felt like that was available to them as a reading of this stuff before we clamped down on all of that.

Speaker 3 They also made Wonder Woman more interested in getting married and shopping.

Speaker 10 She became

Speaker 10 much more more domestic and much less of a conventional superhero.

Speaker 3 The Comics Code tried to address some of Frederick Wertham's concerns about racism in comics.

Speaker 3 They wrote a rule that said, ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible.

Speaker 5 But really, what that ended up meaning was that people of color disappear completely from comics.

Speaker 5 Some of those depictions deserved to disappear, but I think we'd probably be a bit further along in the industry now if folks had sort of stumbled through some things back then instead of just kind of having it completely shoved off the table.

Speaker 3 In 1953, before the code, EC Comics ran a story about an astronaut traveling to a planet of robots to evaluate whether the planet should be allowed to join a galactic alliance.

Speaker 3 The astronaut discovers the robot's robot's world is segregated by color, blue and orange, and decides that they can't be allowed to join.

Speaker 3 At the end of the story, he removes his helmet, revealing that he's a black man.

Speaker 3 After the code, EC Comics decided to reprint that story, but the Comics Code Authority said they would need to make the astronaut white.

Speaker 3 The summer after the Senate hearings, 15 comics publishers went out of business.

Speaker 3 To people who read and wrote comics, Frederick Wortham became a villain. In 1983, one historian and comics fan said, We hate Wortham, despise him.

Speaker 3 People drew parodies of him, like Dr. Frederick Worthless, or in the story, Freddie Wortham goes to hell.

Speaker 8 Did Frederick Wortham

Speaker 3 think he had won?

Speaker 10 He didn't.

Speaker 10 He really hoped that

Speaker 10 the government would find a way of restricting sales of comics to kids ages 12 and younger. He never felt like he had achieved any kind of victory.

Speaker 3 The code stayed in place for decades. It was still around when Soladin Ahmed was growing up.

Speaker 5 Pretty much everything you found was going to have that stamp on it, and I had no idea what it meant. It was just part of the cover dress that meant nothing to me as a kid.

Speaker 3 He says that by the 90s, people didn't care very much about the comics code.

Speaker 5 It sort of died a slow death. By that point, it was really not super powerful anymore, anyway.

Speaker 3 In 2011, it was officially done. Two of the last publishers that were still following the comics code, Archie and DC Comics, announced they were dropping it.

Speaker 3 Are comic book writers still up against some sort of code, what is acceptable and what is not?

Speaker 5 Oh, 1,000%, yeah. If I'm writing a Marvel comic, if I'm writing a DC comic, yeah, I mean, there's literally what they call an SP department, standards and practices, that takes a look and says,

Speaker 5 and it's character-specific sometimes, right? So in a Spider-Man comic, depending on the title and the age rating, a bad guy might be able to say, go to hell. But Spider-Man cannot say that, right?

Speaker 5 Because so it's, it's, because he's, he's too sweet. He's a good guy.
And

Speaker 5 I mean, I've certainly floated stories that got shut down basically because they were a little too relevant.

Speaker 5 And your sort of challenge is to try and tell relevant stories that matter within those confines.

Speaker 3 Would you let your kids read golden age comics?

Speaker 5 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 5 I think they would come to me and find the storytelling a little unsophisticated, maybe,

Speaker 5 find them racist and sexist. You know, kids are incredible critics these days.
I have 13-year-old twins, and they're both incredibly sophisticated viewers, readers.

Speaker 5 So I certainly wouldn't keep it from them, but I don't think they'd be up to snuff for them.

Speaker 3 Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer.
Katie Bishop is our supervising producer.

Speaker 3 Our producers are Susannah Robertson, Jackie Sagico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinnane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti.

Speaker 3 Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.
And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter.

Speaker 3 The recordings of the Senate hearings in this episode are courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives.

Speaker 3 And we do hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. Right now, you can get 20% off an annual membership with the promo code thanks.

Speaker 3 Keep listening at the end of this episode to hear one of our bonus episodes with me and Lauren Spohr. To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com plus.

Speaker 3 We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/slash criminal podcast.

Speaker 3 Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

Speaker 3 I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

Speaker 3 Welcome to Criminal Plus. I'm Phoebe Judge.

Speaker 8 I'm Lauren Spohr.

Speaker 3 And Lauren, I'm a little injured.

Speaker 8 Down for the count.

Speaker 3 But you're supposed to ask, what's wrong?

Speaker 19 Phoebe, what happened?

Speaker 3 Well, thank you for asking. I moved in the wrong way and I've hurt my back.

Speaker 3 And I'll tell you, for someone who likes to be as Johnny on the spot and

Speaker 3 up and go as me,

Speaker 3 I don't like this. I feel very restricted in

Speaker 3 walking and everything. I can barely sit in a chair.

Speaker 8 Well, what I said to you when we talked about this earlier today and even earlier today and yesterday was, this sounds to me like God doing for you what you could not do for yourself, which is just sit still for a minute and enjoy your summer sitting still.

Speaker 8 Just like a little rest. You know, not the worst thing in the world.

Speaker 3 You know, one thing I will say, though, that has made me realize

Speaker 3 it is good to have a back brace in your home. You know,

Speaker 3 handy. You don't know if you're ever going to need it, but it costs about $14 at CVS.

Speaker 3 And I have one, and it also kind of gives you the feeling of what it must have been like, you know, 120 years ago when women were wearing corsets. You know, I mean,

Speaker 3 a lot of different feelings I'm getting wearing this back brace. I don't think it's doing anything to help me, but it is a little stability.

Speaker 8 This reminds me that we had a fabulous how-to session last week with Lena Sillison, who is Danish.

Speaker 8 And apparently, people in Denmark received a notification from the government that they should prepare themselves for three to four days of no electricity.

Speaker 8 And so, Lena was so funny about this. And she said that she was sort of rolling her eyes and not taking it that seriously.

Speaker 8 And then she noticed that, like, people all around her family, people she thought were very level-headed people, began to sort of accumulate water and do the things recommended.

Speaker 8 And so, we had a wonderful session about things to have in your your house in case you lose power for three to four days. And we were all absolutely riveted.

Speaker 8 We all assembled pretty robust shopping carts, I would say.

Speaker 8 And now, what I think I hear you saying is maybe a back brace is a good thing to have in your emergency kit or in your home first aid kit.

Speaker 3 Well, as Lena was giving the presentation, and this was in response, apparently, a number of European countries are doing this to

Speaker 3 the ongoing fighting between Russia and Ukraine. And so,

Speaker 3 as she was giving us the list of things we needed, I made my own shopping list.

Speaker 3 And I still have it in my hand right here. I wrote it on the back of an envelope.
And

Speaker 8 the only thing I can see when you turn that around is wine.

Speaker 3 Well, here's what was on my list for three to four days. Wine is to keep the spirits up, morale up, is water.
Spirits. Water,

Speaker 3 food,

Speaker 3 batteries.

Speaker 8 cash,

Speaker 3 wine, and then it says eight food,

Speaker 3 food for the dog, which people don't think about as it's you have to think about water for your pets and food for your pets.

Speaker 8 I wrote down playing cards, which I thought was an excellent addition. As Lena said, you want to keep spirits up in that way.
She also said candles.

Speaker 8 And you might say, I don't need flashlights and candles, but Lena pointed out that you might want to be cozy. And I thought that was great.

Speaker 3 Well, it was a great presentation.

Speaker 8 It was such a good presentation. We also, we talked about the tool that shatters your windshield, which I can't stop thinking about.

Speaker 3 After the presentation ended, we all started talking about our own things that we would put in.

Speaker 3 I actually said a bottle of bourbon, not to drink, I mean, you could drink it, not to drink for fun, but rather to clean major wounds as kind of an antiseptic.

Speaker 8 But also. And why bourbon and not just ice, like regular alcohol from the store?

Speaker 8 It's sort of more of like a wartime fantasy if it's bourbon.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 if you need need to give someone some sort of pain medication or make them pass out, you can't give them the straight alcohol from the store. You've got to give them the big swig of bourbon.

Speaker 3 Then you get the stick if you need it, put that between their teeth, and then you dump the rest of the bourbon on the wound. So that was my suggestion.
Now, Katie Bishop

Speaker 3 suggested something, a tool that's called Rescue Me, R-E-S-Q-M-E.

Speaker 3 It's a little tool that you keep on your keys and it's pointed in some way.

Speaker 3 It's not sharp, but it's pointed so that if you were to go over a bridge and needed to get out of your car that was sinking in

Speaker 3 the water, or if you needed to get into your car because your baby's in there, your dog's in there, and you've lost feet, it breaks the glass.

Speaker 3 It also has a cutter on it to cut your seatbelt if you can't get your seatbelt undone.

Speaker 8 But also, maybe you have this tool. And if you see someone trapped in their car,

Speaker 8 if you see an animal trapped in a car, you could shatter someone else's windshield from the outside. I was fascinated by this tool.
I've never heard of it before.

Speaker 8 So, it was a really fun hello time session.

Speaker 3 It's about 1099.

Speaker 3 So, I think it's less than it's worth it. Whatever it is, it's worth it.
Just one more thing that we did learn, and that the Danish government was recommending is that

Speaker 3 in case of a nuclear,

Speaker 3 say that word

Speaker 3 nuclear. Do I seem like Dan Quayle or George Bush? Nuclear, nuclear,

Speaker 3 They're recommending iodine

Speaker 3 supplements

Speaker 3 to help with radiation poisoning and cancer. Except if you're over 40,

Speaker 3 don't worry about it. It's not going to do anything.

Speaker 8 Just say bye. Just say your goodbye.

Speaker 3 So Lauren and I did not purchase any iodine. tablets.
But if you're under 40, you might want to throw those into your cart. There's a lot of them on Amazon.

Speaker 3 So we, again, we're having these wonderful summer sessions. Lena did a great job.

Speaker 3 And I'm really,

Speaker 8 she also made it very funny.

Speaker 3 I'm really looking forward to the summer session that we're having tomorrow, which is Veronica Simoneetti teaching us another pretty good life skill, which is how to read tarot.

Speaker 8 I have spent my whole life avoiding tarot because I don't want to be told anything remotely upsetting at any time. So this is something I know nothing about and I've strategically avoided.

Speaker 8 And when friends have said, Joanna, do tarot, I said, no, thanks. So I'll be, I'll be cautiously participating tomorrow.

Speaker 3 I mean, I don't want to have tarot done to me, but I would like to know the skills how to do tarot to someone else is how I feel about it.

Speaker 8 You know what I was thinking about this morning is remember when we went to the Lake District and I was like on the ground rolling around with the sheep and then like later in the day, you were like, there's something going on with your makeup?

Speaker 3 Do you remember that? Because I had like orange

Speaker 3 Lana Lan or whatever all over me.

Speaker 8 And I was like, do you think I've been wearing heavy foundation for the last 10 years of knowing each other?

Speaker 8 And I was like, I'm not wearing any makeup, but I had this like orange slime all over my face.

Speaker 3 It wasn't slime. I think it's called lanolin.
I don't know why I know that from sheep's. Well, I also, Lauren, the smell in the car

Speaker 3 was so

Speaker 3 wild.

Speaker 3 And because when we saw those sheep, you were so, you were down on, it was like you were one of their babies.

Speaker 3 you were so down so special on the ground with them and then you were just covered your face was orange with sheep lanolin from their dirty wool and then we had drive all the way to Manchester that you know with me smelling like a barn

Speaker 8 yeah it did smell like a barn in that car I was I hope to go back there someday.

Speaker 3 Me too. I would love to go.
I would love to go back there.

Speaker 8 I felt so happy there.

Speaker 3 Did you just feel like you were a character in a Jane Austen novel?

Speaker 8 Yeah, like I was in Since in Cincinnati.

Speaker 3 You were Mary Ann.

Speaker 8 You had a sense in the rain.

Speaker 3 You were Mary Ann running down the hill,

Speaker 3 trying to find Willoughby.

Speaker 8 I mean, I've had that curly bangs haircut on and off for a long time.

Speaker 3 I have.

Speaker 3 It shows up every once in a while.

Speaker 3 So last time...

Speaker 3 We, Lauren, you weren't with us. Susanna Robertson and I were on the road flying through Eastern North Carolina, coming back from a good day of interviews, and she guest hosted, stood in your place.

Speaker 3 I think she did a wonderful job. She did a fantastic job.
Wonderful. Fantastic job.

Speaker 8 It was a pleasure for me to get to be a listener.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and but what we talked about last time was that you had kind of created your top five starter pack for people new to criminal, the episodes that you think they should get started with.

Speaker 8 Stop calling it my top five. It's like not my top.
It's very hard for me to say what my top five episodes are, but it would be

Speaker 8 starter pack. The point, the point of it was I have this dear friend who's an extremely beautiful painter.

Speaker 8 And we met first year, first semester of our first year in college at Florida State University. And we were talking on the phone.
And he said, I have to admit that I've never listened to Criminal.

Speaker 8 And then I was like, it's fine. Who cares? And then he, and then he said, would you send me like a few episodes you think I should start with? And then I thought, okay, this is great.

Speaker 8 So it's more like sort of introductory. It's like sort of like to let to let someone know, like, this is the type of show that it is.

Speaker 8 So I picked ones that I I thought were kind of fun or ones that, like, I really remember making

Speaker 8 or that had a lot of twists or, you know, that were sort of a sideways look at crime.

Speaker 3 So one of your episodes was Vanish. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And then, oh, yeah. And then I tried to like summarize them for him in like little

Speaker 8 like one-liners. So

Speaker 8 I picked from Vanish, I said, like, a guy fakes his own death to see who comes to his funeral.

Speaker 3 That's a good episode. Linda.

Speaker 8 Linda is is very memorable to me. It's about a woman who hires a hitman to kill her ex-husband, and then the hitman doesn't do it.
So she hires a second hitman to kill the first hitman.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 8 And what's amazing about that episode is we have tons of audio of Linda being surreptitiously recorded. So you're able to hear her make these phone calls to these men to arrange these things.

Speaker 8 And you can hear the sort of like veiled ways in which she makes these requests. It's very memorable to me.

Speaker 3 The manual.

Speaker 8 The manual is my number one favorite piece of art made by Julianne Alexander. It's a payphone done in this incredible 1980s style.
But a man is accused of murdering his family.

Speaker 8 And then in his home during the investigation, they find this like so-called like murder manual, this how-to book, and the author is a mystery. And then

Speaker 8 that book becomes an important piece of evidence and then becomes the subject of a subsequent legal battle about the sort of our sort of First Amendment Amendment rights around having a book that teaches you how to commit a murder.

Speaker 3 420. Famous episode.

Speaker 8 Famous episode. It's just like we just asked ourselves, like, why is it called, why is weed referred to as 420? Like, how did those two things become associated? And then we surprised ourselves.

Speaker 8 And also, Phoebe, your dad makes an appearance in that.

Speaker 3 Tony Judge Cameo.

Speaker 3 That's a very funny episode.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 your last starter pick, which I totally agree with this one, is All the Time in the World, which is the episode we did when we went to the body farm in Texas. And I would say

Speaker 3 not only is that just a great episode to listen to, but it's one that we hear about still often from criminal listeners.

Speaker 3 And one of the most memorable reporting trips we've ever done because we actually toured the... not only the facilities and the labs, but the actual farm, the actual land where bodies were

Speaker 3 decomposing. And we've had a lot of people call in about this episode lately.
And I think, you know, one of the things that people have said they remembered is

Speaker 3 I was walking with Dr. Danny Westcott, who is the head of the facility and showing us.
the bodies and and Lauren was there and also Nadia Wilson, our senior producer.

Speaker 3 But because I was holding the microphone, I had to, and I was with Danny, I had to be very, very close to him. So I really,

Speaker 3 I really was up close to these bodies,

Speaker 3 incredibly close. And

Speaker 3 one of the things we hear people talk about is I was recording when we got there, and I kept recording. And so I think we have a clip of

Speaker 3 my reaction to

Speaker 3 seeing, to kind of seeing these bodies for the first time.

Speaker 20 You can see the maggots pretty active.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 20 At this stage.

Speaker 20 And then, so this person has gone through bloat.

Speaker 9 You guys all right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, but this is wild stuff.

Speaker 3 This is wild stuff. I don't think many people in their lives see stuff like this.
And Lauren, you know, I remember when we left, we had rented a minivan. I remember that.
We flew into Austin.

Speaker 3 We rented a minivan. And I remember the drive back from

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 center to Austin.

Speaker 3 And do you remember? It was kind of an odd drive back.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, I think we were all pretty

Speaker 3 like,

Speaker 8 it was like we were stoned. Like it was so,

Speaker 8 we had just had this like wild experience. I mean, I remember there being some like tension in the van before the interviews.
Like, I think we were nervous going in. I didn't want to see it.

Speaker 8 And then I think afterwards, we were like completely zonked.

Speaker 3 And I, I wasn't planning on seeing, seeing a body. I had kind of said, I, I don't want, I don't want to see this.
And then

Speaker 3 I really saw it.

Speaker 8 A lot of people have written in to say that after hearing our episode, they want to donate, which I think is really cool.

Speaker 3 And you said, Lauren, after visiting, that you wanted to donate your body. Yes.

Speaker 8 But then you suggested that I get buried at the pet cemetery with my dog Ardell. And I'm a little intrigued by that option.

Speaker 3 Well, we actually,

Speaker 3 we've been hearing about this episode. so often recently and Lauren you picked it so we decided to call Dr.

Speaker 3 Danny West Scott at the center to just kind of check in with him and see how things are going. Hi, Dr.
Westcott, are you there?

Speaker 20 Hi, how are you?

Speaker 3 Well, fine. Well, we're talking to you because we've been asking people at some of our favorite episodes, their favorite episodes that we've ever done of Criminal.

Speaker 3 And we've done, you know, a lot of them. And all the time in the world, the episode we did about our visit to see you

Speaker 3 is always up there at the top. And so, you know, one of the things people have asked us over the years is,

Speaker 3 what is it like for him to work in that situation, you know, around these bodies?

Speaker 3 What is the typical reaction when you tell people what you do?

Speaker 20 So usually I get one of two.

Speaker 20 Either they are very interested in it and think that it's really kind of cool thing, or they don't want to talk about it at all.

Speaker 3 They just want to just deny that

Speaker 3 the death occurs.

Speaker 20 Yeah,

Speaker 20 it's more, yeah, it's just that it kind of the idea of talking about it doesn't

Speaker 20 set well with them. So they would just soon not hear about it.

Speaker 3 And what are, I mean, I know what my reaction was when you showed me those bodies very up close, but what is the typical reaction for people who are coming to the body farm as first-time, you know, interns or students or, you know, journalists?

Speaker 3 Are people shocked?

Speaker 20 Most of the time not, especially the students. The students, I think, have an idea of what to expect.

Speaker 20 And, you know, they're kind of usually, especially our students are kind of eased into it in the fact that they, you know, start out processing.

Speaker 20 So they get involved with it in that sense.

Speaker 20 But it's actually, yeah, usually not as bad as most people think it's going to be. And

Speaker 20 so

Speaker 20 we usually don't have, you know, a big problem.

Speaker 20 Occasionally you'll get a student that doesn't,

Speaker 20 you know, that

Speaker 20 realizes that this is not the career for them based on coming out there.

Speaker 20 For reporters and other people, there again, I think most of them find it pretty fascinating and less,

Speaker 20 you know, on the gross side, I guess.

Speaker 8 I mean, we felt really. lucky that you let us come.
You know, I mean, I think we understood that it was something that not that many people get to see.

Speaker 8 um and it was i think it actually was well suited for radio also because we could sort of um take the listener up close but maybe not further than they'd like to go you know what i mean um

Speaker 8 i wonder what's changed for you and your work since 2017

Speaker 20 Well, we've been, we've expanded quite a bit. We actually, the Skelta lab has moved to a new facility just down the road, but we tripled inside.

Speaker 20 So we have a nice new skeletal lab and which you know fatal facilitates our growing skelta collection we're up to almost 900 donors that we've received so far

Speaker 20 and then we've also started a PhD program since we talked last we've and we've expanded the training portions a lot we've so for example we now do a fire death investigation course

Speaker 20 every year

Speaker 20 and we have a big research project behind that as well on developing standards and protocols and then also you know trying to get different

Speaker 20 you know like crime scene investigators and firefighters and anthropologists all working together and understanding what each other are doing so the fire does that mean you're you're lighting bodies on fire

Speaker 20 yes so the and for the fire investigation uh course we do typically three different ways so we do what uh what's kind of a typical house or internal um

Speaker 20 you know fire so we actually set up uh these little pods that we build um that we set them up as hotel rooms and then we start the fire we set you know we set a body up in different scenarios we start a fire and um

Speaker 20 then we you know we film all this stuff and we record everything that's going on all the temperature data for the for the body itself but also for the room

Speaker 20 um

Speaker 20 and we for the pods we typically burn them for 14 minutes and the reason for that is that the national response time for firefighters is eight minutes and it typically takes them six minutes to put the fire out that's where the 14 minutes comes from and so then

Speaker 20 firefighters and crime scene investigators and and stuff that are taking the courses, it gives them a chance to be exposed to burned remains, but they also have to figure out, work together to figure out what happened.

Speaker 20 And then the nice thing is at the end, we get to show them what happened.

Speaker 20 We also do car fires as well. And

Speaker 20 in those cases,

Speaker 20 we have one that's running and one that's not frequently. So they have to kind of figure that kind of stuff out as well.

Speaker 20 And then we also then will do different scenarios depending on kind of what's going on kind of

Speaker 20 at the at the current time. So we've done, for example, a trash can fire with body in it.
We've done

Speaker 20 trash dump fires because that's one of the things that anthropologists are involved in a lot. So different things that are realistic and give people this training and

Speaker 20 a chance to experience what's going on

Speaker 20 and then, you know, actually be able to see what happened, the events that actually occurred i wonder you know

Speaker 3 you're in you're in texas so it's always hot it was hot when we came to see you but i wonder if

Speaker 3 the the weather getting hotter as i think we're seeing

Speaker 3 you know all over the country is that having impact on on what you're seeing with the bodies

Speaker 20 It is. So actually,

Speaker 20 interesting you say that. I just had

Speaker 20 a student that finished her master's project. She just actually graduated this in May.

Speaker 20 And one of the things that she did was she went back and looked at 10 years worth of decomposition data and analyzed that. And she actually found there are significant changes in the years.

Speaker 20 And it all is associated, or the only thing that really

Speaker 20 stood out was the mean annual temperature. And so as the temperature is increasing, the rate of decomposition is also increasing.

Speaker 3 I was so fascinated when we got there, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but what I remembered is that if you plan to donate your body to

Speaker 3 the facility, you actually are never able to go and see the facility and see where your body will lie. Is that still true? And is that true?

Speaker 20 That is true. I mean, we don't let, we typically don't let people into the facility unless they're researchers.

Speaker 20 But people can can come and visit what they would, where they'll be as far as the Schulton goes. And so we still do that.
We have people that come in and we give tours of the Skeltal lab.

Speaker 20 As a matter of fact, we even have family members that come and visit the Skeltal remains.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 8 Has anything changed? I feel like there's been more and more sort of awareness of the work that you do in other facilities around the country.

Speaker 8 Has anything changed about the way that you, like if a prospective donor calls and says, I'm interested in learning more, has anything changed about how you sort of prepare people for what to expect

Speaker 20 no not really I mean we we are probably

Speaker 20 go over

Speaker 20 details a little more as far as like all the possible things that they might be utilized and research-wise

Speaker 20 we and so one of the things that we

Speaker 20 have always done, but we're probably better about it now, and that is that we keep a record of everything that every study or education purpose or training that a donor's body is used in. And so

Speaker 20 the families can contact us and we'll give them information about what their loved one was used for.

Speaker 8 Have you ever had a family approach you and they were so annoying that you thought, I don't want to work with them?

Speaker 20 Occasionally, yeah.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I want to thank you so much for taking this time. It was great to catch up with you.
And that episode we did with you has really stuck with people these many years later. So thanks again.

Speaker 3 And I know you've got a lot of work to do. So we'll let you go back to it.

Speaker 20 Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Yeah, I very much enjoyed doing that podcast. And I remember

Speaker 20 walking around with Phoebe very well.

Speaker 3 Oh, don't,

Speaker 3 how could I forget it? How could I?

Speaker 3 Thanks so much. Nice to talk to you.
And I'm glad to hear all as well.

Speaker 20 All right, you too. Thank you.

Speaker 3 Bye-bye.

Speaker 8 Phoebe, that arson stuff is interesting.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's really interesting.

Speaker 8 I was like, should we go back?

Speaker 3 I guess we could go back.

Speaker 8 I mean, that's really, that's like a whole other dimension. And it's very relevant to our show.

Speaker 3 I don't know. We talked about arson stories, as we've talked about before, very hard to do.
And we've done some arson stories.

Speaker 3 What was the wonderful episode we did about the, oh, it was so fascinating, about the

Speaker 3 couple who

Speaker 3 were setting fires all over Maryland.

Speaker 3 It was Delaware.

Speaker 3 That's a great episode.

Speaker 8 I think it was called On Fire.

Speaker 3 Boy,

Speaker 3 she was wild. That was a good episode.

Speaker 3 So, Lauren, I think it's time for us to talk a little bit about some things we've been enjoying. Do you want to go first? Yeah, I want to go first.

Speaker 3 But before we started taping today, Lauren said, Phoebe, we've talked enough about the weather. Don't talk about the weather.

Speaker 3 Don't talk about...

Speaker 3 the season that we're in. Then she said, something else I don't want you to talk about is hot dogs, as though I talk about hot dogs every episode.
She said, I don't want to talk about dogs.

Speaker 3 She said, Everybody has a dog. You aren't the only one who has a dog.
You're not the only dog owner out there. Everyone loves their dog.
Everyone thinks their dog is special.

Speaker 3 And I have been talking about my dog recently because my dog was injured, cut her foot on a clamshell. And I bought her a pair of shoes.

Speaker 3 And I just have to say that I think these shoes are fantastic. I bought the dog a pair of shoes.
And so, Lauren, I'm just, I'm talking about the dog shoes for a second.

Speaker 3 You're making me sound like a huge asshole.

Speaker 8 I'm just saying, I also have them for myself. Like, I don't want to talk about running.
I don't want to talk about sheetcake, you know, like I just want to.

Speaker 3 So, your year for me is seasons, hot dogs, and dogs. Those are the three things I can't talk about.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and I love hearing about your dog, but I think you, you have the joie de viv

Speaker 8 of a brand new dog owner. So, you're, this is your first time having a dog.
So, sometimes you forget that literally every producer on our team has a dog.

Speaker 8 So when you say things about what it's like to have a dog, you forget that we've all got them.

Speaker 3 Have you ever had to deal with a 95-pound dog who has an injured paw and is not allowed outside except on a leash for four weeks?

Speaker 8 I'm going to record for the Criminal Plus audience some examples of the way Phoebe talks in our meetings where she'll be like, I don't know if I can do that because I have a dog.

Speaker 3 Lauren,

Speaker 8 they begged me.

Speaker 8 I have to take care of this dog. You know what?

Speaker 3 They begged me to take a day off at Criminal Productions. Everyone would like if I hit the road for a little while.
Anyway, so I got the dog these crocs.

Speaker 3 They're kind of crocs, and they're fantastic, and she loves them. And

Speaker 3 we'll put a picture up of Aiton Crocs.

Speaker 8 She really loves them? Yeah, she doesn't.

Speaker 3 She was prancing a little bit when I first put them on her, but she doesn't try to get them off.

Speaker 3 I think she enjoys them.

Speaker 8 I've always thought if I lived in New York City, I would want to put shoes on my dog so then my dog could get in in my bed and I wouldn't feel like I was like licking the sidewalk, you know?

Speaker 3 Well, these are protective. This is just protective.
So we don't go through it. We just went through ever again.

Speaker 3 And I'm going to recommend, I think they're called Wag, Wag, Wag Cross. I don't even know what they're called, but we'll put a picture up.
They work really well.

Speaker 3 They're staying on here for all you dog owners out there.

Speaker 3 They stay on here.

Speaker 8 Someone should make a dog

Speaker 8 accessories company called Wag-a-Muffin. Wouldn't that be cute? I'm going to patent that after this recording.

Speaker 3 Well, tell them about your other business idea. Lauren called me up yesterday and said,

Speaker 3 she said, I have our next business venture. And I said, okay, what is it, Lauren? And she said,

Speaker 3 a new salon.

Speaker 3 We're going to open a new chain of salons.

Speaker 8 It's called Quickie.

Speaker 3 Called Quickie.

Speaker 3 And what can you give? Why don't you? Yes.

Speaker 8 Every service takes a very small amount of time.

Speaker 3 So it's for busy people who like

Speaker 8 who like to have the experience of the facial or getting your nails done, but don't getting your teeth whitened, getting your eyebrows waxed, getting, I don't know what else yet, but like things that are nice and fun to do, but it's not even about being busy.

Speaker 8 It might be a little bit about an attention span situation, but like, I don't, I went and got a manicure and a pedicure and it took two hours.

Speaker 3 I, no,

Speaker 3 I don't want to be crass, but I've heard that word used in other contexts.

Speaker 8 Quickie.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So is it kind of a play? That's what they say.

Speaker 8 Sex sells, sex sells.

Speaker 8 No, I don't know. I just think like, I think that if you could, if you knew, and another thing that both you and I value highly is things that start on time.
Yeah, well, that is true.

Speaker 8 If you could make it, if you could make an appointment online to go and get, let's say, a facial and it was going to start exactly on time and it was only going to take one one hour i think people would pay a premium to know that it that this was going to be a limited time experience or like maybe you can get your nails and your toes done at the same time and like you'll pay more but it the whole experience will take less time you can make an appointment and it will start exactly when you think it's going to start i don't know i think this is a good idea we're just spilling our secrets i know well i hope i mean Like a haircut sometimes can take your haircuts can take like an hour and a half because you have so much hair.

Speaker 3 I take two. Well, I only get a cut like twice a year or two.
Well, okay, so if you have any thoughts about our new business called Quickie,

Speaker 3 let us know. We've got a lot of business ideas floating around at all moments.
And very few of them actually have to do with podcasts. So we're always coming up with new ideas.

Speaker 3 Remember, Lauren, your bar named Bottles and Cans.

Speaker 8 I have a bar. I'm going to open a cheese shop called Mousetrap.
I'm going to open a bookstore. I haven't figured out the title for that one yet.

Speaker 8 But I think in my next life, I want to do something that involves like a brick and mortar. I want to be standing behind a counter.

Speaker 3 You know, that's my number one goal.

Speaker 8 I want to stand behind a counter. And when you come in, I want to say, hello.

Speaker 3 And you know, my favorite thing in the world is to, is, is commerce, is to actually sell something.

Speaker 3 So you, I'm going to be on QVC selling and demonstrating food products, and you'll be behind the counter at Mousetrap, and everyone will be happy. How about a couple of things we've been enjoying?

Speaker 8 We already did the dog shoes.

Speaker 3 Okay. No,

Speaker 3 that wasn't something I've been enjoying. Pardon moi.
No, but that was, that was an aside because I've been,

Speaker 3 you know, so let's talk about a couple of things you've been enjoying.

Speaker 8 My number one is

Speaker 8 berries. I've been making breakfast parties.

Speaker 8 I don't care. This is something I've really been enjoying.
You know why? Cherries.

Speaker 3 So funny. I actually was going to say cherries.
I actually was going to check

Speaker 8 cherries. And didn't fact check this, but someone told me that cherries have tryptophan.
And so it's a great like nighttime snack, like right before bed.

Speaker 8 But every morning I've been cutting cherries and putting blueberries and blackberries in a thing of yogurt. And it's just absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 8 And it reminded me that I think one of the single nicest and most romantic things that someone can do for someone else.

Speaker 3 Chocolate covered strawberries.

Speaker 3 What? No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 8 Is to make them a fruit plate. Like for someone else to like wash and cut fruit and put it on a plate for you, maybe with some feta.

Speaker 8 I think that that's like one of the top three most romantic things I can think of.

Speaker 3 I don't, you know, when you say that to me, it's just like kind of freeze.

Speaker 3 You know, I think I'm a big acts of service type of gal.

Speaker 3 So, you know,

Speaker 3 someone doing something they really know you don't like to do is something I find to be very nice. You know, something.

Speaker 8 Like call the insurance company or what?

Speaker 8 That's not very romantic.

Speaker 3 Fold my clothes.

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah. That doesn't do anything for me.
Like, that's a very nice thing for someone to do, but that doesn't feel romantic.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 8 like I need it to feel a little frivolous.

Speaker 3 Well, I don't like anything frivolous, so that wouldn't do anything for me.

Speaker 8 But that's a pull quote for the website. Phoebe Judge, I don't like anything frivolous.

Speaker 3 Something, I actually was going to say cherries too.

Speaker 3 Something I saw the other day that I've been thinking about a lot, I was actually, I took my, one of the things I like to do in the summer is I like to take my books that I'm reading for work, and I like to go to the beach, and I like to sit there, and I like to read all these books.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I also watch people, and I was out there all by myself, and I saw this couple sitting off to my right, and they were very fit, incredibly fit, husband and wife.

Speaker 3 And they were drinking their water, and they're out there for a couple of hours. And I was just listening.
I was pretending to read and also listening, which I'm very good at doing. And

Speaker 3 then all of a sudden, the wife brings out a bag of peas, kind of peas, sugar snap peas that she's eating as a snack. Very healthy.

Speaker 3 And then the man opens a cooler and he brings out this little baggy Ziploc bag that has an avocado in it.

Speaker 3 And he's taken the top of the avocado is gone, just the little top of, you know, the egg, right? If you think about it, standing up on its end. And he uses the spoon and he eats the avocado

Speaker 3 inside

Speaker 3 the shell inside the skin he's eating the avocado with a spoon and i thought doesn't that sound like a wonderful transportable snitch snack healthy snack

Speaker 3 have you tried it i haven't tried it yet but i've been thinking a lot about it deal with the pet i know i think it has to be ripe and i think you go around it with the spoon

Speaker 3 these people seem different from me well they seem they're very healthy Very they're they seem very they were very healthy. Um Lauren, what's something else you've been enjoying?

Speaker 3 I've been enjoying the thought of

Speaker 3 eating an avocado like that.

Speaker 8 It's funny, I purchased one avocado yesterday, and I was like, I got to work these in somehow into the mix.

Speaker 8 Something I've been enjoying is a sun hat by Solbari.

Speaker 8 Oh, I can put it on for you. Ready? I'm put on over my headphones.
It's linen.

Speaker 8 It has a ponytail holder. It has a gap for your ponytail to come out of it, and it's very lightweight and very comfortable.
And I've been wearing it every day. Do you like how it looks?

Speaker 3 Can you, Katie Bishop, take a picture, a screenshot, so that we can just show that Lauren

Speaker 3 is wearing the sun hat? We can put this up. The one in just

Speaker 8 over the headphones, but it's a green linen.

Speaker 8 It has a chin strap if you'd like, and it also has a little strap on the back so you can tighten it around your head. But

Speaker 8 I think it's probably the most comfortable way for me to feel like I'm getting full coverage from the sun.

Speaker 8 Sol Bari. I really, I really like it.
And it has some sort of built-in

Speaker 8 UPF factor of 50. It's expensive.
It's like $60,

Speaker 8 but I recommend.

Speaker 3 Something I've been enjoying recently is a movie that to me is the epitome of summer. When I think about summer, I think about this movie.
And I recommend everyone,

Speaker 3 if you've seen it before, it doesn't matter. You'll be so happy to watch it again.
Do you know what movie I'm going to say? It's not Twister.

Speaker 8 It's the sand lot.

Speaker 8 Apollo 13.

Speaker 3 It's a fantastic, everything about that movie is fantastic. and so I'm really recommending that you you go and even if you've seen it seven times before watch Apollo 13

Speaker 3 it you'll be happy you did

Speaker 8 you know what I've been watching I've been watching lost from the beginning did you ever watch it yeah but I got a little well it got a little weird

Speaker 8 yeah it gets weird from episode one

Speaker 8 But what I think I'm enjoying most about the rewatch is just remembering what my life was like the first time I watched it and like remembering where I was when I watched certain episodes.

Speaker 8 Okay, the third thing I've been enjoying is I found a new type of skin lotion by this company called Prequil that's developed by a dermatologist and it's very affordable.

Speaker 8 But I think I've typically been someone who thinks that body lotion is for losers, like who has time to put lotion on your arms or legs when you get out of the shower.

Speaker 8 Like that has never been part of my life. But I started doing it with this prequel lotion and it has actually made my skin like look and feel kind of a lot different.
So I'm converted.

Speaker 8 And I think I appreciate that it's not overpriced.

Speaker 3 Prequel.

Speaker 3 Something I've been enjoying is a bandana. Oh.

Speaker 3 Not for fashion, for the heat. So it's a little hack that you can try.

Speaker 3 If you're going to be outside working in your garden, taking a walk, exercising, Take a bandana and put it in cold water and then put it in your freezer.

Speaker 3 And before you go out, you're going to kind of wrap it around so it's, you know, tightly rolled, and you're going to put it around your neck.

Speaker 3 And I was inspired by this by watching the Tour de France, which is over now, but which is really a sad situation for me because it's my favorite time of year.

Speaker 3 But these guys are just putting water bottles in the back of their necks, you know, next to their jersey and just letting them kind of frozen water bottles, letting them kind of melt.

Speaker 3 And I'm not going to do that that seems a little dramatic for just taking the walk but I this is the frozen bandana trick I think

Speaker 3 is is a really good hack that allows you lets you be outside and Lord knows it's pretty hot out there

Speaker 3 and not have any worry about heat stroke that's a good idea

Speaker 3 I think pretty good idea. Can I just say one more hack before we go?

Speaker 3 We were talking about in Lena Sillison's, going back to Lena Sillison's presentation, which how could you stop thinking about? There's so many things that she taught us in that presentation.

Speaker 3 I brought up one thing that I'm going to say with summer storms and heat that I brought up to the group, and I think it's a pretty good trick that you can do,

Speaker 3 which is if you're worried about the power going out, or if you're going on vacation, and power does go out sometimes, and then it comes back on,

Speaker 3 What you need to do is you need to take a solo cup, some sort of cup.

Speaker 3 It doesn't have to be that big, fill it up with water, put it in your freezer and freeze it, and then put put a quarter on the top of that frozen cup that frozen water

Speaker 3 when you get back from vacation or being out of your house for a few days if the quarter has sunk any lower than the top of that water where

Speaker 3 it means that the power has gone off and that the power into your refrigerator and freezer has gone off and you might want to consider ditching the food.

Speaker 8 I think that's a great tip.

Speaker 3 I think it's, I, I'm saying it because I just, I think it's helpful for who knows about the iodine tablets, but this is a really easy trick you can do to just put it, do it right now, put it in your freezer, and then forget about it.

Speaker 3 And it's a little insurance insurance.

Speaker 8 When you grow up in the south,

Speaker 8 the freezer is already full of solo cups, but they're full of baking grease.

Speaker 8 So everyone can think about that over the weekend.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I think we've covered it all. Thanks very much, everyone, for listening.

Speaker 8 That's a wrap.

Speaker 2 Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
Bye.

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